Taliban – A Fair Analysis.

The group gets its name from the fact that its membership is drawn from the students of Afghan and Pakistani madrasahs. The word “Taliban” was originally the plural form of the Pashto word for “student” (Arabic: طالبṬālib). However, since becoming a loanword in English, most Western journalists use “Taliban” as a singular noun. For example, John Walker Lindh has been referred to as “The American Taliban”, instead of “The American Talib”. This usage has become commonplace.

The Taliban initially had enormous goodwill from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality and incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords. Two contrasting narratives of the beginnings of the Taliban[9] are that the rape and murder of boys and girls from a family traveling to Kandahar or a similar outrage by Mujahideen bandits sparked Mullah Omar and his students to vow to rid Afghanistan of these criminals.[10] The other is that the Pakistan-based lorry shipping mafia known as the “Afghanistan Transit Trade” and their allies in the Pakistan government, trained, armed and financed the Taliban to clear the southern road across Afghanistan to the Central Asian Republics of extortionate bandit gangs.[11]

The basis of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to any group resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and started the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing these U.S.-backed training camps for the Muslims. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan and “by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war”.[12]

The Taliban were based in the Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan regions, and were overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtuns and predominantly Durrani Pashtuns. They received training and arms from Pakistan, the U.S. as well as other Middle Eastern countries who had been recruited by the U.S. to thwart the Soviet invasion of this region.

The first major military activity of the Taliban was in October-November 1994 when they marched from Maiwand in southern Afghanistan to capture Kandahar City and the surrounding provinces, losing only a few dozen men.[13] Starting with the capture of a border crossing and a huge ammunition dump from warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a couple weeks later they freed “a convoy trying to open a trade route from Pakistan to Central Asia” from another group of warlords attempting to extort money.[14] In the next three months this hitherto “unknown force” took control of twelve of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, with Mujahideen warlords often surrendering to them without a fight and the “heavily armed population” giving up their weapons.[15] By September 1996 they captured Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

The Taliban who take control of Afghanistan are the children of Afghan refugees who fled Afghanistan at the time of USSR invasion. They were born raised and educated in Pakistan Madrasahs. Taliban brought stability and peace after taking over Kabul. Their other achievement was the elimination of poppy crop fields destruction. The Taliban are actually are very honest humble and non corrupt people when you compared them with the Pakistan’s politicians or any other politicians of Muslim countries.

Taliban implementing Sharia Law was not their fault. Sharia Laws which majority of Sunnis and Shiites hold so sacred are actually very much corrupted by hadiths (Sunnis, Shiite Talmud) and nobody is allowed to question these laws (except people like me). Sharia Laws in Saudi Arabia and Iran are not very different than Taliban. Taliban Sharia Laws with not allowing girls to go to school were more of the cultural than religious. The Mullahs who wanted to implement the present corrupted Sharia Laws are so arrogant and closed minded that they don’t want to listen to suggestions to revive the true Sharia Laws which are very well preserved in Qur’an but before implementing the punishment laws they first have also to implement the social economic system which is the same which do exists in US and European countries. The problem is that these Mullahs really don’t pay any attention to the social economic system, all they want is to implement the punishment laws, reverse the life style to 1200 back when hadiths were introduced. Mullahs give important to the issues which not at all important for a Muslim like beard, hijab, dress, oppression of women and men in the name of God and religion.

The two American Christian women who were arrested by Taliban on the charges of promoting Christianity when returned to US were quickly picked by CNN and the media to learn about their captivity and how they were treated. These two women were the most honest honorable people who praises Taliban kindness and all their efforts to make their captivity as comfortable as possible within their own limited means. This was big disappointment for CNN and the rest of mainstream media as they were expecting to hear cruel nature of Taliban, these two women were quickly dropped of the news. These women chose to speak truth instead of lies and disappeared from lime light, they could have earn fame and fortune if decided to speak against Taliban.

The present growing support for Taliban and Al Qaida in NWFP is to me is no surprise. This was very much expected because of the Tribal social economic cultural ties between people living on both sides of Pakistan and Afghanistan border. They really never recognize the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The other reason for Taliban and Al Qaida support is the wrong policies of Pakistan and US.

The NWFP provincial government wants to change the name of province to Afghania.

This will help people to have little better understanding of Taliban and Al Qaida.